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Everyone has a massive incentive to look for actual, concrete evidence for a lab escape before they draw any such conclusions. Leaving aside the uncomfortable g

Everyone has a massive incentive to look for actual, concrete evidence for a lab escape before they draw any such conclusions. Leaving aside the uncomfortable geopolitical angle (US policy is to respond to deliberate biowarfare with nuclear weaponry), extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

roenxi 6y ago
1) This clearly wasn't biowarfare. The coronavirus is so useless when viewed as a bioweapon that there is no way it is even vaguely possible that it was developed as one. The idea is laughable. The Chinese military would have to be beyond stupid to go into a bioweapons program and develop a virus that mainly only targets old people, usually doesn't cause symptoms, spreads like wildfire and is therefore a huge risk to countries with large, densely packed populations. If it was a lab escape it would probably have been just part of studying SARS-like viruses for public health reasons. 2) And there is nothing extraordinary about claiming "Standards in practice were lower than the standards on paper". That is a pretty mild claim. Lab escapes of viruses are a thing.
- hobofan 6y ago
  > The coronavirus is so useless when viewed as a bioweapon Considering the how it's playing out in the US, it looks like a great bioweapon for an civilian attack. A big chunk of the population is old enough to be at risk of death. Another non-negligable portion of young people develops long-term disabilities (which is even more crippling to the economy than short-term deaths). And as a nice side-effect of how bad job security is, millions are now unemployed. If you were to construct a civilian bioweapon you want to target against the US, it almost looks like you would have new playbook now. I very much agree though, that it's extremely unlikely that it was developed and planned in that way.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    The variety of weird symptoms ("covid toes" and loss of sense of smell, for example) also adds a lot of uncertainty and distrust on top of the actual problems the virus causes.

roenxi 6y ago

1) This clearly wasn't biowarfare. The coronavirus is so useless when viewed as a bioweapon that there is no way it is even vaguely possible that it was developed as one. The idea is laughable. The Chinese military would have to be beyond stupid to go into a bioweapons program and develop a virus that mainly only targets old people, usually doesn't cause symptoms, spreads like wildfire and is therefore a huge risk to countries with large, densely packed populations. If it was a lab escape it would probably have been just part of studying SARS-like viruses for public health reasons. 2) And there is nothing extraordinary about claiming "Standards in practice were lower than the standards on paper". That is a pretty mild claim. Lab escapes of viruses are a thing.

hobofan 6y ago
> The coronavirus is so useless when viewed as a bioweapon Considering the how it's playing out in the US, it looks like a great bioweapon for an civilian attack. A big chunk of the population is old enough to be at risk of death. Another non-negligable portion of young people develops long-term disabilities (which is even more crippling to the economy than short-term deaths). And as a nice side-effect of how bad job security is, millions are now unemployed. If you were to construct a civilian bioweapon you want to target against the US, it almost looks like you would have new playbook now. I very much agree though, that it's extremely unlikely that it was developed and planned in that way.
- Izkata 6y ago
  The variety of weird symptoms ("covid toes" and loss of sense of smell, for example) also adds a lot of uncertainty and distrust on top of the actual problems the virus causes.